Roe, Nicholas 1955-

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Roe, Nicholas 1955-

PERSONAL:

Born December 14, 1955, in Fareham, Hampshire, England; son of Dennis and Stella Mary Roe; married Susan Jane Stabler. Education: Oxford University, B.A., 1978, Ph.D., 1985. Hobbies and other interests: Cooking, walking, wine, and France.

ADDRESSES:

Office—School of English, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Fife KY16 9AL, Scotland, United Kingdom. E-mail—nhr@st-andrews. ac.uk.

CAREER:

Writer, editor, and educator. Queen's University, Belfast, Ireland, lecturer in English, 1982- 85; University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Scotland, lecturer then professor of English, beginning 1985—; University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, visiting professor in the Department of English, 1989. Also editor of journal Romanticism and academic director of the Coleridge Summer Conference.

MEMBER:

Keats-Shelley Memorial Association (trustee, 1998).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Leverhulme Research Fellowship, 1994-95.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Richard Gravil and Lucy Newlyn) Coleridge's Imagination: Essays in Memory of Pete Laver, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1985.

Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Radical Years, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1985.

The Politics of Nature: Wordsworth and Some Contemporaries, St. Martins's Press (New York, NY), 1992, revised 2nd edition, Palgrave (New York, NY), 2002.

(Editor) William Wordsworth, Selected Poetry, Penguin Books (New York, NY), 1992.

(Editor and contributor) Keats and History, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1995.

John Keats and the Culture of Dissent, Clarendon Press (Cambridge, England), 1997.

(Editor and contributor) Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Sciences of Life, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 2001.

(Editor) Leigh Hunt: Life, Poetics, Politics, Routledge (New York, NY), 2003.

(Editor) Romanticism: An Oxford Guide, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2005.

Fiery Heart: The First Life of Leigh Hunt, Pimlico (London, England), 2005.

Essays and articles have been published in numerous journals and books.

SIDELIGHTS:

Nicholas Roe is an English professor whose primary interest is Romantic literature and culture, most notably the work and lives of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, John Keats, and Leigh Hunt. He has written and helped edit several books focusing on these authors and their times. For example, he is the editor of and a contributor to Keats and History, which contains thirteen essays by both British and American scholars writing about how the ideas and events of Keats's time influenced him. Bernard Beatty, writing in the Review of English Studies, referred to the collection as "impressive." Beatty also wrote: "The volume as a whole is very well edited, solid, and attractive in appearance." Journal of English and Germanic Philology contributor Beth Lau noted that, for Roe's own essay titled "Keats's Commonwealth," the author "draws skillfully on a variety of contemporary sources." Lau added: "The collection convincingly illustrates how fruitful a consideration of Keats in the context of his age and culture can be, and it is likely to help generate further studies in this vein."

In his book John Keats and the Culture of Dissent, Roe inspects the cultural and political milieu of Keats as it pertains to his poetry. "Roe's readings stimulate throughout, even when they provoke the reader to qualification or disagreement," wrote Michael O'Neill in the Review of English Studies, adding that the author "steers adroitly between formalism and historicism, text and context." Modern Philology contributor Nanora Sweet commented: "Students of the New Romanticism will come to John Keats and the Culture of Dissent already intrigued by Nicholas Roe's articles and talks on progressive education at Enfield School and the suburban ‘greening’ of Cockney culture. They and the much wider audience that this book deserves will find much to like here."

Roe's The Politics of Nature: Wordsworth and Some Contemporaries was originally published in 1992, with a second revised edition published a decade later. In the book, the author examines Romanticism while taking into account developments in historical and ecological criticism. He discusses such issues as Wordsworth's radical years and how much of Wordsworth's poetry was not inner-directed but actually focused on the real world as it pertained to the public. "Few books deserve a second edition, but Nicholas Roe's The Politics of Nature is one of them," commented Michael Scrivener in the Wordsworth Circle. Scrivener added: "The second edition of the work reminds us of how persuasive and strongly argued The Politics of Nature is." Roe also served as editor of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Sciences of Life, which presents essays by various authors focusing on Coleridge's relation to not only sciences such as chemistry, geology, and medicine but also to political and social ideas, race theories, and other social topics. Wordsworth Circle contributor Adam Potkay noted that the book "contains something for everyone and will prove very useful at every level of teaching and scholarly endeavor."

Fiery Heart: The First Life of Leigh Hunt focuses on the work and life of the poet and writer who was known for his wide-ranging literary output, including plays, essays, criticisms, and letters. Drawing on and including examples of Hunt's poetry and prose, Roe examines the significant influence that Hunt had on his contemporaries during the Romantic era. In this biography, Roe recounts the first thirty-seven years of Hunt's life. Paolina Taglienti, writing in the Library Journal, noted that the author "creates a full and vivid portrait." A Contemporary Review contributor wrote that "Roe writes with evident sympathy for Hunt and his battle against ‘the establishment.’" A reviewer writing for the Economist noted: "Nicholas Roe's biography deftly pulls together the political, poetic and personal threads. He is a close reader, alive to words and allusions, and steeped in the history and ideas of the period."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Contemporary Review, May, 2005, review of Fiery Heart: The First Life of Leigh Hunt, p. 320.

Economist, January 29, 2005, review of Fiery Heart, p. 81.

Guardian (London, England), January 8, 2005, Andrew Motion, review of Fiery Heart.

Journal of English and Germanic Philology, April, 1997, Beth Lau, review of Keats and History, p. 280.

Library Journal, January 1, 2006, Paolina Taglienti, review of Fiery Heart, p. 119.

Modern Philology, May, 2001, Nanora Sweet, review of John Keats and the Culture of Dissent, p. 689.

Notes and Queries, June, 1996, Miriam Allott, review of Keats and History, p. 234.

Review of English Studies, May, 1997, Bernard Beatty, review of Keats and History, p. 264; November, 1998, Michael O'Neill, review of John Keats and the Culture of Dissent, p. 522.

Wordsworth Circle, fall, 2003, Michael Scrivener, review of The Politics of Nature: Wordsworth and Some Contemporaries, p. 225; fall, 2003, Adam Potkay, review of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Sciences of Life, p. 180; winter, 2005, review of Fiery Heart (quotes from various reviewers), p. 40.